How do you know if it's biased or not?

I'm fairly new to doing any kind of in-depth research into political issues. Some websites make it pretty obvious that they are biased and have an agenda leaning one way or another. Others are not so obvious. How do you know?

I found www.issues2000.org... while looking for some stuff and it seems pretty good. But then part way through looking at it, I think to myself "How do I know who's behind it and if it's really fair or not?". How do I know the person running it isn't right, left or other? Is there a part of the site to look at that will make it clear or give it away?

I appreciate any help anyone can give. It's frustrating to read through a lot of stuff only to find that it's all put up by someone heavily supporting one side or the other.

sometimes what they tell you is wordly so nicely its hard to tell if they're being biased or not. odds are though they are. noone is without a bias so it is helpful to yourself to remember this and take everything said with a grain of salt, sometimes a whole sack of it...

its hard to tell sometimes so you have to maintain a skeptics view that every is supects until proven otherwise. not that we should take anything at face value anyway...

I was hoping to find something with just cold stats, like a voting record in list format with no stump thumping or explanation, even. Just "here's what it was, and he voted no/yes". Either it's not there or I'm not that great at political surfing yet.

Thanks, I'll keep my eye out for anything that seems to be trying hard in either direction.

Per the Whois record, that domain is owned and managed by Anthony Peppler. I'm not seeing any overt political connections for him on a quick Google search, but I don't have the time to do a lot more than that at work right now, sorry.

Just knowing that Whois thing exists is a great help. Thanks, Whiskey Jack.

Originally posted by torque
Just knowing that Whois thing exists is a great help. Thanks, Whiskey Jack.

You're welcome. Sometimes you'll find that the whois records don't have any personal information in them. You can pay the registrar extra to do that, kind of like having an unlisted phone number. It's mostly because spammers were using the whois records to get email addresses to add to their lists.

Originally posted by torque
I was hoping to find something with just cold stats, like a voting record in list format with no stump thumping or explanation, even. Just "here's what it was, and he voted no/yes". Either it's not there or I'm not that great at political surfing yet.

Thanks, I'll keep my eye out for anything that seems to be trying hard in either direction.

Keep in mind that even with a list of cold data you have to be carefull of what you deduce from it. Knowing what somone voted on is not quite as important as why somone voted on somehting.

Example...

There could be a record showing that I voted no on a praposal to send 1 million dollars of funding to a branch of terrorist investigation in Russia.

From that allone you could say that I don't want to fund additional terrorist investigation. However further investigation could show that I voted no on that becasue it turns out that not only is that branch unmanned and was orriginaly created to watch for terrorist activity in north Siberia in 1942, but it is shown that the head of that branch has been managing the funding horribly as it is. With that additional info you can now see that those who are voting for the spending are idiots who are just wasting money.

Cold facts are often misleading in themselfs. I would suggest finding information bout something from both sides, biased or not, then weigh the information with what seems logical to you.

Wraith

[edit on 25-8-2004 by wraith30]

[edit on 25-8-2004 by wraith30]

That's true... I hadn't thought of other things that could be tacked onto the main issue. It just seems like every time I hear something, someone comes up with information to refute it. Then I have to figure out was the original information a lie, or is the person refuting it driving their own agenda? It's like "During the Bush administration, the glass has become half full" and someone comes along saying "We have proof that it's actually become half empty!". *L* It makes me nuts!

Originally posted by torque
That's true... I hadn't thought of other things that could be tacked onto the main issue. It just seems like every time I hear something, someone comes up with information to refute it. Then I have to figure out was the original information a lie, or is the person refuting it driving their own agenda? It's like "During the Bush administration, the glass has become half full" and someone comes along saying "We have proof that it's actually become half empty!". *L* It makes me nuts!

it's bound to make you nuts.. if it didn't all of this would be really easy.. and what fun is that?

The trick is to look at the glass, take into considerationt aht it is likly that the glass is both half full and half empty at the same time.. but with enough looking into it you might find out that it is full of Arsnic and you should let some other fool drink it.

Wraith